Instead of Funding Retirement Accounts As Mandatory, Treasury Proceeds To Plunder The Most Since Debt Ceiling Breach

As the chart below shows, while at the end of every quarter, the US Treasury is traditionally supposed to fund a quarterly payment into the various government retirement funds (previously discussed here), this time around, instead of putting in even one penny into G and CSRD Funds, Tim Geithner has decided to defraud government retirees by the most since the US debt ceiling was breached, or, specifically, since intragovernmental "holdings" became a mere plug to make room for marketable debt. So while the debt held by the public increased by $21 billion following the settlement of last week's auctions, in order to stay under the $14.294 billion ceiling, the Treasury was forced to "disinvest" another $20 billion from retirement funds. At this point the various funds that fall under this umbrella are underinvested by at least $120 billion and likely much more. Of course, this is not an event of default as per Geithner's fine print: as soon as the debt ceiling is hiked, these will be the first funds that are replenished. On the other hand, if there is no debt ceiling hike, and courtesy of marketable debt having priority to intragovernmental debt, government retirees are increasingly becoming the impaired class in what may be shaping up to be the world's biggest bankruptcy filing in history.